But the more planning and preparation you do for these projects ahead of time, the better your finished product will be.

This is true for most scenarios in life.

Writing interesting, insightful, and educational content for readers is certainly no different.

Use the six steps below for the best way to plan a blog post from start to finish, and publish content that is interesting and educational for a specific audience (i.e. potential customers).

Readers won’t just respect this content and the brand behind it, but will actually seek out this content and hold the brand in high regard.

This is the natural way to build authority for readers as well as search engines like Google.

1. Know the Brand You’re Representing

There can never be enough emphasis on this.

Too many times when writing on behalf of a brand or business, writers forget (or never consider) said brand’s overall voice and tone.

This is a critical component for success when it comes to consistency, styling, and messaging.

You want to ensure all of this is in line with general brand guidelines and its overall brand image.

Larger, well-established brands typically will have brand guidelines that should include brand voice and tone.

But even if official brand guidelines aren’t available, there are still many ways you can get a greater understanding of a brand, its voice and tone, and its general messaging with goals in mind.

Read Old Blogs by the Brand

A good starting point would be to look back and read older blog content published by the brand.

Depending on how long the brand has been creating well-developed, quality content, you could get a deep understanding of the general style and brand voice used.

Work to recreate that with your own insightful spin.

Run a Content Audit (or a Shorter, Modified Version of One)

When in a position to run the overarching content strategy or just consistently write content for the same brand, it would likely be worth a writer or content strategist’s time to run a micro content audit.

This will help you get the best idea of, not just the overall style and voice of the content, but also the goals of the brand and to identify what works well in terms of traffic, engagement, and performance (and what does not).

This will also help when developing ideas for blog topics and to identify content gaps.

Look at Competitors

Competitors will likely publish their own quality content, but the content produced on behalf of a competing brand like the one you represent should be unique to that brand.

That is one of the main ways brands can — and are supposed to — stand out. Use it to your advantage.

This is also a no-brainer when moving into a content role within a business or industry one may not be too familiar with.

You want to understand the brand you represent and its messaging, obviously.

But it will also help to understand the brand’s main competitors, how they work to separate themselves from their competition, and ways you can surpass them in terms of educating and enlightening potential customers.

2. Understand Your Audience

You can’t understand your audience without also knowing the brand you’re writing for.

You can’t publish quality content without fully understanding both of those critical variables.

Using the above-mentioned means to better understand both is always going to help a brand’s overall content strategy and execution.

Remember to use topics that interest your audience and verbiage that makes sense to your audience.

3. Finding Topics to Write About

This may be one of the most difficult steps of the planning process for many. But it shouldn’t be.

As a writer that represents a brand — a brand that is an authority on certain topics and/or industries — there is always going to be valuable insight to offer current and potential customers.

Think about frequently asked questions on many websites; they are built from topics/questions commonly asked repeatedly over time by those interested in the brand and/or its business, and those answers are sought out through search engines thousands of times per day.

Offering people (the right) answers to their questions is always going to build trust behind a brand and the writers representing it.

Competitive Analysis

Aside from the frequently-asked-questions exercise to explore content ideas, writers should also lean on competitive analysis to come up with more good topics to write about.

Some brands will do a decent job of covering a lot of different topics within their industry, while other brands will do a better job covering only specific areas within that industry they may specialize in or have more experience in.

Use all this research to build out quality blog topics based on the abundance or lack of quality content on certain topics.

Identify the content gaps of competitors as areas to focus on and start to gain market share from competition, and stand out in the areas that other brands are lacking in.

An analysis of your own brand in a similar way will help you identify where your brand is lacking as well.

Keyword Research

The important elements of more in-depth issues with a variety of layers and subtopics.

Over the last 10 to 15 years, a bunch of keyword-research tools has hit the market to help aid content strategists with topic discovery.

In addition to classic tools like Google Keyword Planner (formerly known as the Keyword Tool), Ubersuggest, Google Analytics, and traditional Google Autocomplete, new-and-improved platforms like SEMrush’s Keyword Magic Tool, Moz’s Keyword Explorer, and MarketMuse, just to name a few, have also made quite the impact on the world of content.

Other proprietary tools that are higher in terms of cost but are ever-so-powerful, like Conductor and BrightEdge, offer even more content ideas and high-value keyword targets to help shape strategy, among other content marketing tools.

Make Sure It’s Interesting

Most of all — and it may sound simple, but it is all too often ignored — make sure the content you’re planning is interesting to the audience that it is being written for.

If you’re well-versed in a brand and/or industry and don’t personally find a blog topic to be interesting, helpful, or educational, chances are the audience won’t think it is, either.